How To Roller Skate

Learn to rollerskate with this video tutorial from Roller City and improve your skating skills. Learn the basics on moving forward, stopping and everything that you need to start rollerskating.

We're going to teach you to skate and the first thing you need to do once you've got your skates on is come to a rink and get close to a hand rail. Claire here will demonstrate to us how to push off to start skating. First of all, put your right foot down on to its stopper, come away from the handrail a little bit and then push yourself off, forwards and then follow your other foot beside it and then you're starting to push yourself off.

Once you get your momentum going, you want to push your feet out in a slight diagonal changing your weight between each foot and you should be able to get good momentum and then you put your toe down, push off and then push out in a slightly diagonal motion and it's just like walking. So once you've got the basic steps going and you're picking up speed, you want to keep practicing and keep your knees slightly bent so you relax whilst you're skating and once you've got that going you can then keep your momentum strong by when you get to a corner crossing your feet over and you will naturally skate in a circle by crossing your feet over. Some people will find it easier to skate one way than the other.

It's always good to practice skating the other way by crossing your foot over and then going in the other direction. Once you've got the momentum going, you can pick up speed. The harder and the more effort you put in your skates the quicker you will get.

Some people like to run on their stoppers first to get more speed so instead of pushing off once they push off twice and then they speed up and the more you extend your legs and skate harder, then the quicker you will go, going around in circles or going in a straight line. It's always good to practice both ways so you won't be in so much trouble when you get to a corner and stopping is very important. So once you get your skating going you need to stop, the best way to stop is by using your wheels and your stoppers and not the wall.

First of all, I'll teach you how to t-stop, it also is a good way of starting, so if you get your legs in a t position, one foot behind the other, you can then push off and then stop with the same foot you pushed off with. What you want to try to do is keep all four wheels flat to the floor, maybe with a slight angle so you'll bring it down like a brake and once you've got that to a T, you will find that T stop is easy. So the next stop I will show you is a hockey stop.

What you need to do is keep your momentum going, pick a position on where you want to stop and then plant one foot, once you plant one foot, you want o push the second foot out, lifting the heel slightly, you don't want to put too much push on to this foot because you might tip over and fall. So once you've got that going, you will find that's the quickest stop while going forwards. I will show you.

Once you've got that down, you will find it a lot quicker stopping and a lot more mobility in your stopping and that's how you basically skate. You've got your forwards momentum; you've got your easy stopping, and then your hockey stop. .